Very Very Far Away will be LIVE this weekend, September 23rd and 24th, at the seventh annual Digital Design Weekend at Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This special VVFA performance and workshop will be the first installment in the Sightseer Project, a speculation about a space tether anchored on an artificial island in the Pacific.

Over the course of the weekend, VVFA will set up as a pop-up radio station broadcasting in-person interviews (Garnet Hertz, David Benqué, Joseph Popper), playing back episodes from VVFA podcasts, conducting performances with members of the audience and presenting improvised music by WORMSand other space-themed musical selections.

Very Very Far Away (VVFA) is a public facing research project consisting of a podcast, a workshop and a series of special projects, seeking to re-ignite future ideologies. Its method uses Space Exploration as a lens to examine current ideas and values which may pertain to future societies through technological advances.

In From The Cold is a radiophonic piece in 6 +1 parts, intended for continuous transmission: 0. The Ice, 1. The Ship, 2. The Thaw, 3. The Deluge & The Storm, 4. The Drowned World, 5. The New Ooze, 6. Frost. With each section, the piece maps a myth of the world's origin with Antarctica at its center.

Through the lens of the ice continent, In From The Cold focuses on environmental shifts, our limited perception of time, and life in extreme environments. A speculation about systemic changes over millennia, the piece contrasts human existence with geological timescales. Antarctica contains a stratigraphic index of geological epochs and preserves bacteria in cryostasis over millions of years. With rapidly rising temperatures caused by climate change, the Antarctic ice sheet is a time-bomb, releasing ancient life forms into a post-human primal ooze.

南极洲馆中，站在个人的作品《In From the Cold》前的艺术家Jasmin BlascoArtist Jasmin Blasco in front of his piece In From the Cold, at the Antarctica Pavilion

ANTARCTICA PAVILION

The Antarctica Pavilion is hosted in yet another splendid palazzo, on the southern part of the main island of Venice, facing Giudecca. It hosts a number of works by international artists, some of whom had the chance to travel to Antarctica and produce work over there. I enjoy the way works are presented on top of photographic tripods and the overall balance between lyricism and science.

My favorite work is by LA-based artist Jasmin Blasco, a sound piece you can listen to on portable FM radios out in the garden. At a short distance from the solar powered radio transmitter and antenna that feed my radio, I sit near the canal and listen to about fifteen minutes (the total duration is an hour and a quarter) of Blasco’s improvised narration. The artist recounts a story of South Pole exploration in the early 20th Century from the perspective of the leader of the mission, but also from that of bacteria and other life forms trapped in the ice since millennia ago. The work is eerie; sentences find their way through long moments of silence, when one can hear the interference in the radio signal as well as ethereal synth chords. There are many references I connect with, from the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft to John Carpenter’s The Thing and the music of Vangelis. The piece is immersive, and I lose all sense of time and place very quickly; it’s only that annoying feeling I get in Venice, urging me to see more art and meet more people, that pushes me to come back from the Pole.

Jasmin Blasco & Pico Studio in partnership with Creative Migration are proud to announce The First Human Born In Space’s official debut is in TILL IT’S GONE, an Exhibition on Nature and Sustainability, at the Istanbul Modern (January 13 – June 5, 2016) – featuring artists from various periods and geographies, exploring artistic positions and approaches to the ecological issues and to the world we live in.

TILL IT'S GONE is curated by Çelenk Bafra and Paolo Colombo.

On Wednesday January 13th, Jasmin Blasco will participate in "In Conversation With Artists" the first event of TILL IT’S GONE. The exhibition curators will talk about nature and art with some of the participating artists. Reflecting various approaches regarding our world and the environment. The artists will discuss the conceptual framework of the exhibition through their own artistic practices.

"On the issue of climate we must be united. This concerns the whole of humanity." — French President François Hollande

As world leaders convene for the COP21 climate talks in Paris, join JBL and Creative Migration for a special event through #COPisHere, part of OpenIDEO's Accelerate program. Experience the story of the Native Astronaut through a series of fictional journal entries authored by a theoretical entity: The First Human Born In Space

This is a preview gathering before the project’s official debut inTILL IT’S GONE, an Exhibition on Nature and Sustainability, at the Istanbul Modern (January 13 – June 5, 2016). Let's explore climate innovation and toast to a more sustainable future!